small changes: taking back control of research through open software

Abstract

The academic research process in the UK is hindered by the corporate software ecosystems imposed by universities. For all the advancement of open research practices, the use and distribution of open source software in academic research has been neglected in favour of the proprietary software defaults provided top-down by our institutions. Despite progress on open access publishing and open data sharing, academic researchers still use closed software like Microsoft Word for writing, Microsoft SharePoint for document management, and Microsoft Teams or Zoom for communication and conferencing. In this talk, I discuss the failures of proprietary software in UK Higher Education and advocate for open researchers to take back control of their research process using open source software.

In particular, I focus on small software changes that academic researchers can make to their research practices. This includes using Zotero for reference management, using kMeet for videoconferencing, and using Zettlr for note-taking and academic writing. I argue that these small acts lay the groundwork for larger cultural change in open research such as divesting from proprietary software platforms like Elsevier's Pure or the Ex Libris suite of academic library systems. By embedding open source software in open research practices, we can divest from expensive and unreliable corporate software and take back control of the research process.